The surge of Covid patients is putting Great Western Hospital’s recovery effort in jeopardy.

Due to the continuing pandemic, the hospital has had to cancel a number of appointments after staff spent the last 12 months trying to reduce waiting lists.

Chief executive Kevin McNamara said: “We’ve made some good efforts to bring in a number of patients waiting longer than a year for treatment, which before the pandemic would have been really unusual to just have one waiting more than a year for treatment.”

There were just under 2,000 patients waiting for a year for treatments in February. “We got that down to around 600. So positive progress on that, and by the end of the financial year, we expect to be around the 450 mark,”he said.

“That’s dependent on us having good flow and good movement through our theatres, beds for patients, intensive care beds available because some of them need to be supported in intensive care after their operations.

“So the current situation obviously puts that in jeopardy and that is obviously a concern for other patients waiting on the waiting list.”